Sunday, August 24, 2008 Cariño: Americanisms By Linda Grace Cariño Paradigm Shift
IF YOU have already read Michael Crichton's State of Fear, then - like myself - your environmental consciousness is probably at least a little shaken… but this piece is not about the book. It is in part about one particular word I encountered while reading it: “complected” (gosh, my computer underlines it in red, refusing to recognize it as a legitimate word).
While I knew what it meant, my sense was that it should be complexioned, i.e., “fair complexioned.” A fast skim through the dictionary revealed “complected” to mean: complexioned. Further forays into the word revealed that it is an Americanism, i.e., those who speak the Queen's English Do Not Recognize It. They're like my computer. Me too.
Other Americanisms I can't seem to take to: "different than" and "to the contrary." I prefer the more standard "different from" and "on the contrary." Say what you like, but when my son says "than" and "to" when using said expressions, I correct him.
Like I do when he gives the second syllable in "becuz" a "u" as in "up." It's because as in "hall." Also, "fith" when saying "fifth" is really lazy.
One Americanism many Europeans react really strongly against is the manner of writing dates numerically. Americans numerize (a Linda-ism there) with the numbers for month, day, and year, in that order. So 8/5/08 is August 5, 2008. Europeans would write that 5/8/08, and say, too the fifth of August, not August fith.
As I've said a many times, there are as many Englishes as there are population clusters that speak them, and yes, language is dynamic. Still even if I'm Filipino, I advise against "watch your steps," "for a while," and "I'll go ahead."
But whatever the English, the word google beats all.
